The second the lecture theatre’s heavy wooden door has swung shut behind him, Tao’s phone is in his hand. He flicks it off silent and thumbs into his messages, back to the last active conversation where the latest incoming message still sits awaiting a reply.

Good luck with your exam!

Tao ducks his chin towards his chest so he’s not grinning at the whole empty lobby. He didn’t have time to reply on his mad dash from the bus stop to the lecture theatre, only glancing at the message before shoving his phone into his bag and dropping it at the front of the room, but now he taps out a response:

i absolutely CRUSHED IT

“Dude, right here.”

Tao glances up, his thumb hovering over the send button, and sees Sehun lounging on the bottom step of the stairs leading up to the mezzanine. He grins, sends the message, and slides his phone back into his pocket.

“Hey, what’s up? How was your exam?” He takes Sehun’s extended hand and pulls him up off the stairs into a hug. “Corporate Crime, right?”

“Forensic Entomology,” Sehun corrects him with a waggle of his eyebrows.

“Is that the insect one?”

“Yup!”

“Gross.”

Sehun laughs. “It was good. They totally tried to trick us on the beetles bit, but I would know a hide beetle anywhere.”

Tao shudders and shoves Sehun’s shoulder. “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be that happy about things that feed on rotting flesh.”

“I mean, the hide beetles only show up once it’s just the dried skin and bo-”

“I don’t want to know!”

Sehun laughs again, then claps a hand over his mouth as the sound rings through the high ceilings of the lobby.

“Come on,” he says, softer, and hooks an arm through Tao’s elbow. “Let’s get coffee. How was calc?”

“Dude, I nailed it. I couldn’t believe it, I was waiting for the question that was gonna stump me and it just never happened!”

“Nice.” Sehun slaps Tao between the shoulders and drags him up to the mezzanine floor, where there’s a door through to the wide-open Atrium with its cushioned benches and abundant coffee. “Either you aced the whole thing or else you did so badly you don’t even realise how badly you did. Dunning-Kruger effect. It’s gotta be one or the other.”

“Considering how many nights I’ve spent studying rather than sleeping, I’ll be pissed if it’s not option A.” Tao fishes his phone out of his pocket as a message chimes in.

Awesome! I knew you would.

“Mmmhm?” When Tao glances up, Sehun isn’t even trying not to smirk at him.

“What?”

“Is that all you’ve been doing rather than sleeping?” Sehun needles.

“Wh- huh?”

“Just saying,” Sehun continues, expression smug and eyebrows in the stratosphere, “you’ve been reeeally happy recently. And you’ve also been getting that look on your face while you’re texting someone who isn’t me.”

“What look?”

Another message slides onto his screen:

Are you free this afternoon?

“That look.”

“I-”

“Is it music boy?”

“Wh-”

“I bet it’s music boy.” Sehun’s grin spreads Cheshire-wide, and he nudges Tao into the line snaking out the door of their usual cafe.

“Music boy?”

“Your PhD man,” Sehun clarifies, as if Tao is confused as to who they’re talking about rather than incredulous that Minseok has a nickname in Sehun’s head.

“He’s not my- he’s not-”

“Isn’t he? You’ve been spending a lot of time with him.”

“He’s been helping me study!”

“Is that all he’s been doing?”

“Yes!” Tao tilts his phone away so Sehun can’t see the screen and taps out a furious message.

yes just let me get rid of my stupid best friend first

The reply comes in before Tao can even lock his phone again.

LMAO okay.

“I wanna meet him,” Sehun is saying, completely oblivious to the fact that Tao’s attention is elsewhere.

“No.”

“I gotta make sure he’s good for you.”

“I’ve gone from a B to an A- in the space of a month, I’m pretty sure he’s good for me.”

“Oh, so you are dating then?”

“N- stop it! Why are you like this?”

“I want you to think back on how much you said when I got together with Chanyeol and remember that you deserve this.”

“We’re not even dating though!”

Sehun just laughs, head thrown back so that his cackle is siren-loud through the cafe. Several annoyed heads turn their way, and Tao tries in vain to reel Sehun in under control with a hand on his elbow.

“You’re a ing embarrassment.” His phone chimes in his pocket, but at this point he doesn’t think he can take any more of Sehun’s teasing so he resists the urge to drag it back out.

“Sounds like you’re too easy to embarrass.” Sehun leans out of the queue to eye up the food in the cabinet. “Do I want cake? I think I want cake.”

“I want a Honey Heaven brownie,” Tao mutters.

“He’s your sugar daddy, isn’t he?”

“Sehun, I will shove my entire fist down your throat-”

“Ah, chill. Help me choose a cake. And answer your damn phone.”

Tao pulls his phone out of his pocket, unlocks it, and stops dead.

OMG

OMG, Tao. That guy is your best friend?

TAO. BUG BOY IS YOUR BEST FRIEND?

Tao turns around, head spinning faster than he can physically pivot to locate-

Minseok is sitting at his table in the far corner, his phone in one hand and the other pressed over his mouth to hold back a grin that Tao thinks might be actually hurting him at this point. His third iced Americano sits forgotten next to his notebook, his eyes gleeful on the back of Sehun’s head. As Tao sees him, Minseok catches his gaze and winks.

Tao looks down at his phone.

I’m crying, this is the funniest thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.

He doesn’t know how Minseok knows Sehun, or why his name is apparently Bug Boy, but as Sehun turns to ask his opinion on the carrot cake Tao decides that having the two of them meet in this moment would almost certainly be the worst possible outcome, so he abruptly turns his back on Minseok and becomes very interested in the three sandwich options that the cafe has had as standard since the start of his degree.

When he’s confident that Sehun’s attention is completely focused on coaching the trainee barista through his complex coffee order, he slips his phone back out of his pocket and sends Minseok another text:

as soon as i manage to ditch his , you’re explaining EVERYTHING.

-

“Holy , Tao-”

“Dude, what the -”

Minseok is laughing almost too hard to breathe, clutching onto Tao’s arm by way of greeting as he leans against the sun-soaked brick and wheezes with glee. Tao glances over his shoulder to make sure the courtyard is clear of anyone he knows, then shakes Minseok a little in the hope that some form of coherency will fall out.

“Okay, okay.” Minseok takes Tao’s hand and pulls him across to the far edge of the courtyard where they can sit down with their feet on the lawn, their backs to the ears of any passers-by. “This is definitely not as funny as I’m making it out to be, but I’m low-key dying. This whole semester, Yixing and I have had this running joke - there’s been this group of kids who study in the cafe, I dunno if they’re doing biology or what, but there’s this one guy who’s always ing going on about bugs, like he’s weirdly in love with blowflies and the beetles that eat dead bodies? And Yixing and I have been making fun of this kid and his beetle obsession, Yixing literally wrote a vocal part for one of his sonatas as a joke composed entirely of we heard him say about Poecilochirus mites and now he can’t play it with a straight face anymore, like we have been so obsessedwith this Bug Boy, and now it turns out that he’s your friend Sehun? I thought I was gonna piss my pants, I heard his ing laugh and I was ready to text Yixing the latest juicy bug goss, but then I saw he was with you and I was like. This is fate. This is how the universe works for me, of coursemy favourite undergrad is friends with the weird bug man, dude, why does he like bugs so much?”

“Oh my god,” Tao groans. “It’s his class. Forensic Etymology- no. Ety- Enty- Entomology. They’re literally studying the bugs that show up when you die, it is the nastiest thing ever and I can’t believe they made a whole course out of it.”

“Oh my god, that’s even more bizarre than I expected.”

“He’s a Criminology major,” Tao explains.

“Figures. Crim students are always weird.”

“To be honest, Sehun’s just weird in general.”

“I still can’t believe you’re friends with him. Yixing’s going to lose his mind when I tell him.”

Tao glances sideways at Minseok, who is pulling his shoes off so he can dangle his bare toes over the edge of the brick and almost touch the grass with them.

“You… talk to Yixing about me?”

“Yeah?” Minseok says, like this shouldn’t be a question. “Why, do you not want me to?”

“No, no.” Tao quickly averts his eyes as Minseok looks up at him and, for lack of anything else to do, busies himself with yanking off his own shoes. “I was just wondering.” He buries his feet in the grass and wiggles them around until his toes are twined cool and green through the blades.

There’s a moment of silence, and then-

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Huh?” Tao looks up, then follows Minseok’s pointed glance down to their feet - Tao’s absentmindedly plucking grass by the toeful and Minseok’s barely even reaching the ground.

“I know I’m short, but you don’t have to be so on the nose about it.”

“Oh my god-” Tao yanks his feet back, bringing half a clump of grass up by the roots, “no, I swear, I’m not-”

“I’m playing with you.” Minseok nudges into his shoulder, sending one of Tao’s hands to the bricks for balance. “Do you want coffee? No, probably not, you just had one. I need another, though. Do you want anything?”

“A brownie?” There’s an eager note that Tao can’t quite keep out of his voice - if Minseok is standing up without putting his shoes on then that means he’s going to Honey Heaven just on the other side of the courtyard, and there are few things Tao wouldn’t do at this point for a bite of apricot fudge.

“Done.” Minseok trots off barefoot across the courtyard.

Tao flops backwards onto the cobbled bricks to feel the sun soak through his T-shirt, baking into his skin until he reaches the verge of burning. It’s almost hot enough to be at the beach, he thinks; another week or two ought to do it. Maybe after his last exam he can go to the beach to celebrate with M-

“Here.” The paper bag hitting his chest startles him up to his elbows.

“Thanks.” He takes a peek inside. Sweet apricot goodness, oh Lord. “You’re the best.”

Minseok just smiles as he sits down next to him, pressing the soles of his feet together and letting his knees fall almost flat either side. The ice rattles inside his cup as he swirls it and lifts the straw to his lips to take a long sip, eyes fixed in the far distance out across the city below them.

“How much coffee have you had today?” Tao asks. He counted three on the table at the cafe earlier, but that’s not to say they represented the sum total of Minseok's caffeine consumption for the day.

“Four,” Minseok says slowly, eyes narrowing at the horizon. “No, wait. Five? Yeah.” He takes another long sip, then pulls back and stares at the cup. “That’s probably a lot, huh?”

“Maybe a bit much.”

“Hm.” Minseok looks at the cup for another moment, then hands it to Tao. “Here you go.”

“Oh-”

“I’m heading for a crash in a couple hours anyway. No point prolonging the inevitable.”

Tao blinks between Minseok and the cup, waiting for one to tell him what to do with the other. Minseok seems to consider the conversation at its natural end, though, so after a moment Tao raises the straw to his lips and takes a cautious sip.

“Ah- ew.”

“Hm?” Minseok glances at him, then grins. “Oh yeah. Still not a fan?”

Tao shakes his head. “I kinda want to put sugar in this.”

“I don’t know how much you know about dissolving sugar in cold liquids,” Minseok says, “but it doesn’t happen.”

Tao makes a face at the cup. “Honey, then? Or something?” He grimaces at it, but when that doesn’t sweeten it he gives up and takes another sip. Coffee is coffee, after all, and this one happens to be free.

“By the time you’re doing your PhD, you’ll be so used to the taste of cold coffee that putting ice in it feels more like accepting fate.”

“Is it really that miserable?”

“Oh, it’s hell. But it’s also the greatest thing I’ve ever done, you know? There’s music in my brain, Tao, I just have to figure out how to get it out.”

Tao nods around another sip of coffee and quickly sweetens it with a bite of his brownie.

“Mm- mmm.”

Minseok laughs. “The way you eat is so cute.”

Tao sticks his tongue out. Minseok just laughs again and imitates Tao’s happy little hum.

It’s when Tao is halfway through the brownie that Minseok sits bolt upright.

“Holy .”

“Hm?” Tao’s mouth is gummed shut with apricot fudge, so he puts his concern into the widest eyes he can.

“That’s it. That’s it- Tao!” Minseok scrambles to his feet and hauls his bag onto his shoulder. “I’ve got it, it’s up here-” He taps his forehead with the hand holding his shoes, almost dropping them but seeming unconcerned that he’s basically kicking himself in the face. “It’s all- I gotta get to a piano, it’s gonna disappear if I don’t get it down.”

He turns and takes off across the courtyard without bothering to pull his shoes on, the pigeons fleeing ahead of his bare feet. Tao watches him go with no small amount of bemusement, and is just about to turn back to the city view and his brownie when Minseok stops and turns back to yell at him.

“Hurry up! Are you coming or what?”

“Oh- oh!” Tao stumbles to his feet and tears off after him through the indignant pigeons, scattering them to the sky as he follows Minseok into the Atrium and towards the music halls beyond.

--

A/N: Today Sacha had to write 60% of a lab report in the space of 20 minutes and ended up submitting it with one minute to spare. I thought it was a good time to post this.